Skies of Arcadia: Difference between revisions

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- If you care about your in-game title "Vyse the _____" never run from a battle, open *every* treasure chest, and GameFAQ the stupid mine dungeon. If you are trying to get 100% discovery completion, get a location guide and do them as soon as you have access to whatever area they are in. You can get scooped by Domingo and lose your discovery reward (until a certain plot point happens, at which point you can take your time).
* Play it on the Gamecube if you can, the Dreamcast version has lost-forever DLC content that was just packaged in with the GC version, and it's got a much more reasonable random encounter rate.


- Try and figure out ahead of time which characters will be the healer(s) and specialize your magic that way. Save all the "seeds" you find until you know who you want to specialize in what stat.
* Don't bother trying to 100% your first time through. You will need to have a guide attached to your hip, and that sucks all the fun right out. Conversely, once you decide you want to 100%, attach a guide to your hip. There are a lot of missable items.


- Catching fish can be fun, but isn't worth it if you're only doing it for the cash.
* Other than that, just be relatively thorough, don't run from battles unless you absolutely have to, and remember that dialogue choices are about acting like a captain, not a shonen hero. (If you're not sure how to answer, "what would Dad/Dyne do" is a pretty decent yardstick for the 'right' options.)


- Kill loopers when you can, they drop mad cash.
* Bring torpedoes on your ship, they're good for helping to stack damage during rounds where the enemy is open. They can be fired by anyone, but your regular cannons should be fired by your physical attackers.


- Do the Doctor + little girl with a bird sidequest, it will get you the black/white map way early in the game, which is key to avoiding random battles. Not to mention the other insane amount of loot you get from finding food for her bird.
* Before you land in the town of Maramba, stop back at Sailor's Island to buy and equip a secondary cannon, it's extremely useful for a fight coming up and you won't get another opportunity to buy one until after.


- For the love of god, save before challenging any bounty. You always have the option to "walk away" when you meet a new bounty. Do so, save, and then go try and kick their ass. Bounty battles and the black spot battles are the hardest part of the game, bar none. Final bosses don't even compare.
* You can use healing magic during ship battles.


- Don't ever sell the "special" weapons. Aka tuna cutlass, lolipop-marang...
* Save before fighting the bounties (they'll ask if you're ready before the combat triggers), they're generally the hardest fights in the game.


- Magic works weird in this game, and I'll talk about it a little so it's not so confusing, but feel free to skip ahead if you already know. Every weapon in the game can be any of the 6 moon colors at any time. You can even switch the color mid-battle. These colors are how your team learns new magic spells. If everyone is using purple weapons, then your entire team gets lots of purple magic experience, which will get you new ice spells. If 2 people are using yellow and 2 people are using blue weapons when the battle ends, the entire team will get an even amount of yellow and blue magic experience. I originally thought that whatever character was holding the weapon would get magic experience correlating with that color, but this is false, it is team-wide experience. Basically you want the entire team to use one color because you get a bonus for more people using one color at time. Max out green first since that is your healing / regen / poison stuff, and after that it's up to you.
* Don't bother catching fish unless you're going for the title, or just having fun.


- Ship battles are complicated but can be a lot of fun, I suggest reading a FAQ on it. The short of it is, you can have every character do 1 action per turn, similar to normal combat. You want Vyse and anyone with high ATK to fire the main cannons (torps and side cannons it doesn't matter), and you want Fina or anyone with high MAG to cast spells.
* Healing items still work through Delta Shield.


- Don't fret too much about Moonberry spending, but I can tell you right now most of Drachma and Fina's stuff isn't worth it. Definitely get pirate's wrath and delta shield, as well as royal shield.
* The game is a bit slow to start, but really opens up once Drachma joins the party.


- [http://soaworld.rpgplanet.gamespy.com/Index.htm This site is pretty useful, although very old and poorly designed.]
* The best loadout for your ship is one Main Cannon, One Subcannon, Two Torpedoes. Bring them all to bear in one big meaty turn of damage


- Each character seems to have a different affinity to each colour. As in their learn rate for spells will be higher. In fact I think each of your playable characters have a different element they learn quickest.
* You get another ship later in the game, but any captain's stripes you apply to your earlier ship will carry over to the next ship. There's no reason to save them.


- In reality offensive magic isn't so important, focus on learning green, and maybe silver on one or two people.
* Don't run from battles if you can, because every time you runaway it reduces your ranking towards Vyse the Cowardly. If you plan to try and acheive one of the challenging titles, running away will make it literally impossible to do.


- Any defensive special attacks Delta Shield, etc. will always act first, take advantage of that.
[[category:games]]
 
- Ship battles are fun and usually easy. With the right tactics you can win just about any ship battle. I prefer big guns over sub machine guns. Make sure you have torpedoes so you can stack the damage on the rounds where the enemy is wide open.
 
- Don't worry about saving your captain's stripes (or what ever the item that increases all parameters of a ship are) The final ship is over powered, ship battles are easy once you get the hang of them, and they might actually carry over (Not sure on that last one)
 
- Learn the elemental chart well. You can get through most of the random battles without relying on elemental weaknesses. But it never hurts to have the edge.
 
- YMMV, but on my most recent playthrough I pretty much eschewed magic entirely, except for using its basic healing spells to top off after some fights. Using spells while in battle eats up SP, which would be better spent on your characters' special moves. Even healing and support spells have item-equivalents, all of which are fairly cheap (and if you're keeping up on your Discoveries money shouldn't be an issue anyway), become available in shops well before you actually start needing them, are exactly as effective as their magic-equivalents, aren't limited by a character's MP, and don't use party SP - a Sacrum crystal will save you 8 SP, which will let you throw in another Cutlass Fury and end the fight that much sooner.
 
== Magic Experience ==
 
Not like this really matters, but...
That magic experience system seems off. It's been a while since I played, and I don't feel like playing to the point where I can accurately test. Lost my memory card in a move and haven't started again since.
 
But the way I remember working it out was each character produces the same amount of magic experience for all characters in the colour of their weapon in the amount of the magic exp earned. Then character receives a bonus of the earned magic experience in the colour of their weapon.
 
Eg: magic exp of 3: Vyse - silver, Fina & Aika - green, Drachma - purple
 
Team each earns 3 silver, 6 green, 3 purple. Vyse earns an extra 3, silver, Fina & Aika each earn an extra 3 green, and Drachma earns an extra 3 purple. Making the totals:
 
Vyse: 6 silver, 6 green, 3 purple
 
Fina & Aika: 3 silver, 9 green, 3 purple
 
Drachma: 3 silver, 6 green, 6 purple.
 
Which kind of goes against Pyrocats' theory that a weapon's colour doesn't help that character learn faster.
[[Category:Games]]

Latest revision as of 11:56, 26 March 2024

  • Play it on the Gamecube if you can, the Dreamcast version has lost-forever DLC content that was just packaged in with the GC version, and it's got a much more reasonable random encounter rate.
  • Don't bother trying to 100% your first time through. You will need to have a guide attached to your hip, and that sucks all the fun right out. Conversely, once you decide you want to 100%, attach a guide to your hip. There are a lot of missable items.
  • Other than that, just be relatively thorough, don't run from battles unless you absolutely have to, and remember that dialogue choices are about acting like a captain, not a shonen hero. (If you're not sure how to answer, "what would Dad/Dyne do" is a pretty decent yardstick for the 'right' options.)
  • Bring torpedoes on your ship, they're good for helping to stack damage during rounds where the enemy is open. They can be fired by anyone, but your regular cannons should be fired by your physical attackers.
  • Before you land in the town of Maramba, stop back at Sailor's Island to buy and equip a secondary cannon, it's extremely useful for a fight coming up and you won't get another opportunity to buy one until after.
  • You can use healing magic during ship battles.
  • Save before fighting the bounties (they'll ask if you're ready before the combat triggers), they're generally the hardest fights in the game.
  • Don't bother catching fish unless you're going for the title, or just having fun.
  • Healing items still work through Delta Shield.
  • The game is a bit slow to start, but really opens up once Drachma joins the party.
  • The best loadout for your ship is one Main Cannon, One Subcannon, Two Torpedoes. Bring them all to bear in one big meaty turn of damage
  • You get another ship later in the game, but any captain's stripes you apply to your earlier ship will carry over to the next ship. There's no reason to save them.
  • Don't run from battles if you can, because every time you runaway it reduces your ranking towards Vyse the Cowardly. If you plan to try and acheive one of the challenging titles, running away will make it literally impossible to do.
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